Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World , and Airframe . He is also the creator of the television series ER.

NOTE: The unprintable Arabic script found in the footnotes of the original paper version has been rendered as “(…)” in this e-text version. -Russell

[1] Throughout the manuscript, Ibn Fadlan is inexact about the size and composition of his party. Whether this apparent carelessness reflects his assumption that the reader knows the composition of the caravan, or whether it is a consequence of lost passages of the text, one cannot be sure. Social conventions may also be a factor, for Ibn Fadlan never states that his party is greater than a few individuals, when in fact it probably numbered a hundred people or more, and twice as many horses and camels. But Ibn Fadlan does not count-literally-slaves, servants, and lesser members of the caravan.

[2] Farzan, an unabashed admirer of Ibn Fadlan, believes that this paragraph reveals “the sensibility of a modern anthropologist, recording not only the customs of a people, but the mechanisms which act to enforce those customs. The economic meaning of killing a nomad leader’s horses is the approximate equivalent of modern death-taxes; that is, it tends to retard the accumulation of inherited wealth in a family. Although demanded by religion, this could not have been a popular practice, any more than it is during the present day. Ibn Fadlan most astutely demonstrates the way it is imposed upon the reluctant.”

[3] Actually, Ibn Fadlan’s word for them here was “Rus,” the name of this particular tribe of Northmen. In the text, he sometimes calls the Scandinavians by their particular tribal name, and sometimes he calls them “Varangians” as a generic term. Historians now reserve the term Varangian for the Scandinavian mercenaries employed by the Byzantine Empire. To avoid confusion, in this translation the terms “Northmen” and “Norsemen” are everywhere employed.

[4] Arabs have always been uneasy about translating the Koran. The earliest sheiks held that the holy book could not be translated, an injunction apparently based on religious considerations. But everyone who has attempted a translation agrees for the most secular reasons: Arabic is by nature a succinct language, and the Koran is composed as poetry and therefore even more concentrated. The difficulties of conveying literal meaning-to say nothing of the grace and elegance of the original Arabic-have led translators to preface their work with prolonged and abject apologies.

At the same time, Islam is an active, expansive way of thought, and the tenth century was one of its peak periods of dissemination. This expansion inevitably necessitated translations for the use of new converts, and translations were made, but never happily from the standpoint of the Arabs.

[5] This alone was startling to an Arab observer from a warm climate. Muslim practice called for quick burial, often the same day as the death, after a short ceremony of ritual washing and prayer.

[6] Or, possibly, “crazed.” The Latin manuscripts read cerritus , but the Arabic of Yakut says (…), “dazed” or “dazzled.”

[7] Interestingly, in both Arabic and Latin, literally “disease.”

[8] The perils of translation are demonstrated in this sentence. The original Arabic of Yakut reads (…) and means literally “There is no name I can speak.” The Xymos manuscript employs the Latin verb dare , with the meaning “I cannot give it a name,” implying that the interpreter does not know the correct word in a non-Norse tongue. The Razi manuscript, which also contains the interpreter’s speeches in fuller detail, uses the word edere , with the meaning “There is no name that I can make known [to you].” This is the more correct translation. The Northman is literally afraid to say the word, lest it call up demons. In Latin, edere has the sense of “giving birth to” and “calling up,” as well as its literal meaning, “to put forth.” Later paragraphs confirm this sense of the meaning.

[9] Wulfgar was left behind. Jensen states the Northmen commonly held a messenger as hostage, and this is why “appropriate messengers were the sons of kings, or high nobles, or other persons who had some value to their own community, thus making them fitting hostages.” Olaf Jorgensen argues that Wulfgar remained behind because he was afraid to go back.

[10] Some early authors apparently thought this meant that the sail was hemmed in rope; there are eighteenth-century drawings that show the Viking sails with rope borderings. There is no evidence that this was the case; Ibn Fadlan meant that the sails were trimmed in the nautical sense; i.e., angled to best catch the wind, by the use of sealskin ropes as halyards.

[11] This is a typically Muslim sentiment. Unlike Christianity, a religion which in many ways it resembles, Islam does not emphasize a concept of original sin arising from the fall of man. Sin for a Muslim is forgetfulness in carrying out the prescribed daily rituals of the religion. As a corollary, it is a more serious offense to forget the ritual entirely than to remember the ritual and yet fail to carry it out either through extenuating circumstances or personal inadequacy. Thus Ibn Fadlan is saying, in effect, that he is mindful of proper conduct even though he is not acting according to it; this is better than nothing.

[12] Other eyewitness accounts disagree with Ibn Fadlan’s description of the treatment of slaves and adultery, and therefore some authorities question his reliability as a social observer. In fact there was probably substantial local variation, from tribe to tribe, in the accepted treatment of slaves and unfaithful wives.

[13] There is some dispute among modern scholars about the origin of the term “Viking,” but most agree with Ibn Fadlan, that it derives from “vik,” meaning a creek or narrow river.

[14] The accuracy of Ibn Fadlan’s reporting is confirmed here by direct archaeological evidence. In 1948 the military site of Trelleborg, in western Zealand in Denmark, was excavated. The site corresponds exactly to Ibn Fadlan’s description of the size, nature, and structure of the settlement.

[15] Literally, “a two-handed man.” As will be clear later, the Northmen were ambidextrous in fighting, and to shift weapons from one hand to another was considered an admirable trick. Thus a two-handed man is cunning. A related meaning was once attached to the word “shifty,” which now means deceitful and evasive, but formerly had a more positive sense of “resourceful, full of maneuvers.”

[16] This account of what is obviously a sighting of whales is disputed by many scholars. It appears in the manuscript of Razi as it is here, but in Sjogren’s translation it is much briefer, and in it the Northmen are shown as playing an elaborate joke upon the Arab. The Northmen knew about whales and distinguished them from sea monsters, according to Sjogren. Other scholars, including Hassan, doubt that Ibn Fadlan could be unaware of the existence of whales, as he appears to be here.

[17] Popular representations of the Scandinavians always show them wearing helmets with horns. This is an anachronism; at the time of Ibn Fadlan’s visit, such helmets had not been worn for more than a thousand years, since the Early Bronze Age.

[18] The described figurine corresponds closely to several carvings discovered by archaeologists in France and Austria.

[19] Ducere spiritu : literally, “to inhale.”

[20] This is not the same “angel of death” who was with the Northmen on the banks of the Volga. Apparently each tribe had an old woman who performed shamanistic functions and was referred to as “the angel of death.” It is thus a generic term.

[21] The Scandinavians were apparently more impressed by the stealth and viciousness of the creatures than the fact of their cannibalism. Jensen suggests that cannibalism might be abhorrent to the Norsemen because it made entry into Valhalla more difficult; there is no evidence for this view.

However, for Ibn Fadlan, with his extensive erudition, the notion of cannibalism may have implied some difficulties in the afterlife. The Eater of the Dead is a well-known creature of Egyptian mythology, a fearsome beast with the head of a crocodile, the trunk of a lion, and the back of a hippopotamus. This Eater of the Dead devours the wicked after their Judgment.

It is worth remembering that for most of man’s history, ritual cannibalism, in one form or another, for one reason or another, was neither rare nor remarkable. Peking man and Neanderthal man were both apparently cannibals; so were, at various times, the Scythians, the Chinese, the Irish, the Peruvians, the Mayoruna, the Jagas, the Egyptians, the Australian aborigines, the Maoris, the Greeks, the Hurons, the Iroquois, the Pawnees, and the Ashanti.

During the time Ibn Fadlan was in Scandinavia, other Arab traders were in China, where they recorded that human flesh-referred to as “two-legged mutton”-was openly and legally sold in markets.

Martinson suggests that the Northmen found the wendol cannibalism repellent because they believed that the flesh of warriors was fed to women, particularly the mother of the wendol. There is no evidence for this view, either, but it would certainly make a Norse warrior’s death more shameful.

[22] An Arab would be especially inclined to think so, for Islamic religious art tends to be nonrepresentational, and in quality similar to much Scandinavian art, which often seems to favor pure design. However, the Norsemen had no injunction against representing gods, and often did so.

[23] (…): literally, “veins.” The Arabic phrase has led to some scholarly errors; E. D. Graham has written, for example, that “the Vikings foretold the future by a ritual of cutting the veins of animals and spreading them on the ground.” This is almost certainty wrong; the Arabic phrase for cleaning an animal is “cutting the veins,” and Ibn Fadlan was here referring to the widespread practice of divination by examination of entrails. Linguists, who deal with such vernacular phrases all the time, are fond of discrepancies in meaning; a favorite example of Halstead’s is the English warning “Look out!” which usually means that one should do exactly the opposite and dive for cover.